Could you imagine a device or software developed in the 1960s that may be affecting your life right now? Could you imagine it may have evolved so much through the decades that you don’t even realize you are actually using it as you are reading this article?

The terminology of cloud computing may be around from the early 2000s, but you have to go back until the 60s to find its first use. In fact, at that time computer bureaus allowed companies and firms to rent time for some of their projects, instead of buying a computer facility for their needs.

Move on to the era of PC and buying computers became quite affordable. These “renting” services became obsolete, and yet the idea for a company to pay when needed an access to computer power came back under different forms, such as service providers, utility computing, and grid computing of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

It’s around this time that cloud computing rose as the best solutions as a service for business needs.

By definition, cloud computing refers to providing on-demand computing services through an internet connection, and it’s offered as a pay as you go service.

The next question you may have is: how does it work?

Companies may not have the need to own a computing storage or data centers, so they pay for a service to rent their computing infrastructure and they have access to their applications or stored data from the cloud service provider.

Is it really a good thing to trust an outside company with your data? It may sound strange, but the answer is yes. Companies and firms don’t have to put up with the upfront costs of building and maintaining their own IT infrastructure. They just pay the computing space they need, when they need it. For a cloud computing service, this becomes a profitable business, as they only have to sell the same product (cloud storage) to more and more customers.

So, if you think about it, somewhere in every corner of the world there must be huge buildings that contain these massive computer storages, but why then are they called cloud computing (services)? An underlying concept about cloud computing is that the location of the storage and all its features (such as hardware or operating system) doesn’t concern the end user at all. This is why the people in charge call it the cloud computing. They took the metaphor of the cloud from old telecoms network schematics, in which the public telephone network (and later the internet) was often represented as a cloud to denote that the underlying technologies were irrelevant.

Ok, we’ve seen so far how cloud computing has become an integral part of many businesses’ existence, let’s talk now how important it actually is.

Would you like to know how much the IT industry can count on money spent for cloud computing services? Would you like to know how much this number grew in 2017? Well, here are the facts.

Thanks to a research by IDC, more than a third of all the money spent on IT goes to building the infrastructure to host cloud computing. And at the same time, the expense foreseen for in-house IT capabilities will keep going down as more and more companies prefer to opt for the cloud, no matter if the cloud computing service is a public service (which means the company rely on a cloud service outside of its direct control) or a private service. Another research conducted by 451 Research says that in 2017 companies spent on IT hosting and cloud as much as one-third of their entire IT expense “indicating a growing reliance on external sources of infrastructure, application, management and security services”.

Also, analyst Gartner says that the firms that are now using the cloud globally will opt for this service in full by 2021. According to Gartner, global spending on cloud services reached $260bn in 2017 up from $219.6bn. The analysts also highlighted the fact that cloud computing services are increasing in size at a faster pace than they imagined. Although data can’t say yet if this growth is caused by the demand of the market or if cloud services are accountable because of the different products they are putting in front of the companies. Surely cloud subscriptions are a more profitable solution than one-off licenses.

You have now a clear image of what cloud computing is and how it is going to affect companies worldwide. It’s time to dive deep into the different options a cloud service may present itself to satisfy a client’s need.

First of all, cloud computing can be identified as Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS. This type of cloud service is aimed to provide enterprises the access to vital web architecture, such as storage space, servers, and connections, but at the same time, the companies don’t have to buy and manage by themselves this internet infrastructure. Iaas is a totally scalable service, and this helps to save money both for the clients and the companies offering this solution. Iaas lets a business to develop and grow on demand. It is also the foundational ground for the other types of cloud computing services, as it provides also the infrastructure that runs the service.

After IaaS, you can find Platform as a Service, or PaaS. This particular service is often created inside IaaS clouds by specialized engineers that render the scalability and deployment of any application trivial and help make your expenses scalable and predictable. Very low budget companies can start out their application on a PaaS and focus on its development. You can also scale and design your product since it is based on cloud computing. A downside to PaaS is that there may be some restrictions that could affect your line of work.

Last but not least, Software as a Service (SaaS) is a well-known cloud service and its existence dates way back cloud computing. This application will allow you to work on the cloud and will help you to make your project scalable since you are using the software architecture of the cloud. It will also sensibly decrease the problems given by maintenance, support, and operations by having the application run on computers belonging to the vendor.

These are the cloud computing services you can find to help your company with storage issues or application issues. Look out for the best solution and you will be on your way to leverage cloud computing.